Rick Steves writes: 'What a treat Padua is – just 30 minutes by train from jam-packed Venice, and yet, far less touristy.'
At Padua’s Piazza delle Erbe, the market is closed, the merchants are gone, and shadows have replaced harsh sunlight. As if waiting to reclaim their square, students spill out of colorful bars – drinks in hand. Clustered around tall but tiny round tables – tipsy on the big, rough cobbles – they sip their drinks and dip bread in shallow dishes of plush olive oil.
Each morning, Piazza delle Erbe is an almost exotic-feeling market – long famous for its vast selection of fresh herbs, fruits, and vegetables.The students here know that their University of Padua is one of the oldest, greatest, and historically progressive schools in Europe.
Tourists visiting the university are treated to a peek at the world’s first permanent anatomy theater, which dates from the 1500s. Despite the Church’s strict ban on autopsies, students would pack into this theater to watch professors dissect human cadavers. If the Church came a-knockin’, the table could be flipped, allowing the corpse to fall into a river below and be replaced with an animal.
The glorious Scrovegni Chapel is wallpapered with Giotto’s beautifully preserved cycle of nearly 40 frescoes depicting scenes from the lives of Jesus and Mary. Finished in 1305, it’s considered by many to be the first piece of Renaissance art – a sign that Europe was breaking out of the Middle Ages. Giotto placed real people in real scenes, expressing real human emotions.
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